The amateur years
Spain · born Barcelona, 1937 · died 2019 · right-handed · Queen's champion 1960 and Eastbourne champion 1972
All playersBack to the rankings
3
Grass singles titles on the roll: Perth 1959, Queen's 1960, Eastbourne 1972
36
Years before another Spanish man won a grass title, Rafael Nadal at Queen's in 2008
SF
Best Wimbledon singles result, 1970
1967
Wimbledon Professional doubles champion, with Pancho Gonzales
34
His age when he won the 1972 French Open
Andrés Gimeno was born in Barcelona in 1937. His father, Esteban, a good player himself, coached him at the Real Club de Tenis Barcelona, and at 17 he won the Spanish doubles title. After a spell in Australia he won the Western Australian Championships in Perth in 1959, and in 1960, his best amateur year, he won Monte Carlo, Barcelona and Queen's Club.
In July 1960, at 23, he signed a three-year professional contract with Jack Kramer worth $16,000 a year. By the mid-1960s he was rated the third-best professional behind Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall, and he reached the finals of the French Pro in 1962 and 1967, the London Pro in 1965 and the US Pro in 1967, losing each time to Laver or Rosewall.
Open tennis gave him a late second career. He reached the 1969 Australian Open final, the Wimbledon semi-finals in 1970 and, at 34, won the 1972 French Open, beating Patrick Proisy 4-6, 6-3, 6-1, 6-1; he remains the oldest first-time men's major champion. A knee injury ended his career in 1973. He opened his own tennis club at Castelldefels, near Barcelona, in 1974, worked as a coach and television commentator, and entered the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2009. He died in 2019, aged 82, after a long illness.
| Perth 1959 | Won the Western Australian Championships at Royal King's Park, beating Butch Buchholz 6-1, 6-4, 6-3 in the final |
|---|---|
| Queen's 1960 | Beat Ramanathan Krishnan and Rod Laver, then Roy Emerson 8-6, 6-3 in the final |
| Eastbourne 1972 | Won the South of England Championships at Devonshire Park, beating Pierre Barthès 7-5, 6-3 in the final, in the same season as his French Open title |
| Wimbledon | Semi-finals in 1970, aged 32, lost to John Newcombe 6-3, 8-6, 6-0. At the 1967 Wimbledon World Professional Championships he lost to Laver in the singles semi-finals and won the doubles with Pancho Gonzales, beating Laver and Fred Stolle 6-4, 14-12 |
| Western Australian Championships | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1959 | Men's singles | |
| Queen's Club | ||
| 1960 | Men's singles | |
| Eastbourne | ||
| 1972 | Men's singles South of England Championships | |
Leading grass titles only: the grass majors, tour-level grass events since 1968 and the leading grass championships before 1968. † single source; ‡ sources disagree. Roll of champions
"He was a gentleman on court and had an enormous talent"
The person behind the player.
July 1960
A proposal to end the split between amateurs and professionals failed by five votes at the ILTF's annual meeting in 1960, and several leading amateurs turned professional. Jack Kramer signed the 23-year-old Gimeno for $16,000 a year plus bonuses and expenses; his first professional match was against Alex Olmedo in Deauville that August.
Source: ATP TourRoland Garros, 1972
Seeded sixth, he came back from two sets to one down against Clark Graebner, beat Stan Smith for the only time in six meetings, survived five sets against Alex Metreveli in the semi-finals and lost the first set of the final to Patrick Proisy before winning the next three.
Source: International Tennis Hall of FameOn the golf course
Cliff Drysdale remembered a friend who was always looking for a reason to laugh. On the golf course, Drysdale recalled, Gimeno would call out with a smile, "Irone Sinko Dreesdale idiota": five iron, you idiot.
Source: ATP TourCastelldefels, 1974
In 1972 he bought 20,000 square metres of land to build a tennis club. It opened in September 1974, with Juan Antonio Samaranch, then Spain's sports minister, at the opening, and by the end of the decade had 25 courts and 1,600 members.
Source: ATP TourQueen's Club, 2008
When Rafael Nadal beat Novak Djokovic in the 2008 Queen's final, newspapers noted that he was the first Spanish man to win a grass-court title since Gimeno had won at Eastbourne in 1972.
Source: The Irish TimesFree membership: player news, the grass court Atlas, the rankings and the grass season calendar.
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